There are more than enough Republican-controlled blue state legislatures to deny HRC an Electoral College majority and throw the election to the House. There is no legal or constitutional obstacle to President Scott Walker or Rick Scott, if enough legislatures award them enough EV's for third place and no candidate gets to 270. Nothing more than an unenforceable norm stands in the way. Does that make anyone else nervous?

The reason the Republicans have this mess on their hands in the first place is that the poor racists realized that the party serves Wall street instead of poor racists. So what you're proposing just makes their mess worse. Unless you're actually fearing an all out dictatorship power grab overthrow of the government by Republicans. I'm not seeing any path to anything besides a Clinton presidency.

5: The thing is, they don't need for the party to unite behind a candidate for this to happen. All they need is for a majority of Republican legislators in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan to unite behind a candidate. And it doesn't have to be the same one in every state; anyone will do for the purpose of denying Hillary the EV's. So the best case outcome in this scenario is that the next President is effectively chosen by the median Florida Republican. The worst case is it's the median Texas Republican.

Clearly, Trump supporters and, potentially, anyone who sees this sort of procedural move as a dirty trick, would object to this as anti-democratic.

Uh... huh. "Sees this as a dirty trick" indeed. I'd take a Trump presidency above that kind of stuff - the legislature could still block most of the nasty stuff he'd do. The powerful/wealthy members of society just openly deciding that even a veneer of Democracy isn't working anymore would be a whole different level of crisis.

I guess it's good to know that the Washington Post is already preparing its next fallback analysis/prediction after "brokered convention" (and "get out the vote" and "ceiling of support" parts 5, 4,3, 2 and 1, and "just a silly season fad" and "well that's the end of his campaign").

Imagine the right wing media start whipping up a furor around this. How long does State Rep. Joe Teabagger hold up in the face of accusations that he is enabling a Hillary Clinton presidency? And once one state goes, the pressure will mount for other states to act, if only to put forward their own favored candidate. I wish I could discount this possibility entirely, but after Florida 2000 and Bush v. Gore, I can't convince myself it's impossible.

Am I sheltered? Because this looks like one of the dumbest examples of the political what-if genre I've seen in a while.

Within the party, talk of a brokered Republican National Convention or even a supporting a third-party candidate has circulated among those hoping to stop him from becoming the next president, leaving Trump antagonists across the spectrum to ponder whether there's any fail-safe left, after November, to stop a Trump administration from becoming a reality. There is. The electoral college.

I mean, yeah, in the hypothetical case where Trump wins on Election Day, it's vaguely interesting to know that states could change the laws to make delegates vote for someone else in the electoral college. But we've already assumed away all the Republican Party establishment's considerable options to sabotage Trump, and the Democratic nominee winning. In that case, why stop at assuming multiple quick state-level changes to laws? Why not go even farther and assume another constitutional convention and fix everything at once?

Realistically, Trump still might not be the nominee; there hasn't been a primary since Rubio dropped out. The not-Trump vote could still coalesce behind Cruz or Kasich. I don't think that's likely overall, but let's be clear about what we're taking for granted.

But, fine, let's assume Trump is the Republican nominee. Let's also assume away a brokered convention; I can't be bothered to figure that out. In that case, the Republican establishment will have to do some soul-searching and decide whether they'd rather sabotage Trump or not. If they want to sabotage him, they could just give him less institutional support, or give Gary Johnson some money, and the Democratic nominee would win in a walk. (The electoral college has to get to 270, but most states go to the plurality winner. If Sanders gets 45 percent in Arizona, Trump gets 40 percent, and Johnson gets 15 percent, Sanders wins.) If the establishment swallows their pride and supports him, then he could make a credible run of it. Which would suck for everyone, but, well, they don't care.

Any of these scenarios is more likely than state legislatures throwing the election to someone other than a major party nominee.

Not to go ad hominem, but I thought the article was so dumb that I spent 5 minutes looking into the author. A professor at a conservative Christian college? Sounds about right for someone who would rather grasp at straws about changing election laws than imagine Trump, Clinton, or Sanders winning.

1: Well, it didn't happen in 2008 or 2012, so that's should be reassuring.

17 See, one reason I don't like that compact is that it opens up a disconnection between a state's EV and the voters' votes. And national voting is a terrible idea where we have one-party states: there's a limit to how much damages ballot box stuffing in, say, Texas, can do in the current system. Removing that limit seems a truly awful idea.

19: A whole arms race starting from "Actually in Texas voters get three ballots for, um, fairness? In case they're ambivalent about the eventual candidate but want to express a more limited preference but they don't have to fill them all out though and most don't bother so you can't just insist on dividing our results by three." would be pretty hilarious, eventually.

If Trump wins a majority or large plurality of delegates, he is the nominee. Certainly possible it's Cruz instead.
If Trump is the nominee, the party will back him.
Trump probably loses to Hillary, but if he wins he takes office.
These masturbatory what-if fantasies on the nomination and general are fine for wasting time at work, but come November there will be NMM to them.

There's a difference between changing the electoral system for the Presidency before any election takes place and doing so in the middle. I think that even doing the former is now unconstitutional under current law (14th Amendment Art. 2, Baker v Carr, 15th Amendment). None of the examples given in the article actually remove the right of the electors to be determined by popular vote. And changing the rules for the Presidential election in the middle of its happening is even more unconstitutional. It also violates existing state law and state constitutions in tons of places. And putting that aside it is as a matter of politics -- well, not impossible, but basically at the same level of wondering whether a military coup would stop Trump or Hillary.

Given law professors, it's probably not the dumbest thing one wrote in the past week, but it's pretty dumb.

12: Yes. The unstated idea of the author seems to be that if the Republican Party hadn't fucked its own primary, they would beat Hillary so stopping Trump is the same as stopping Clinton.

Anyway, I think changing the rules for the Republican Convention to stop Trump from being the nominee would start riots. Changing the rules for the selection of the Electoral College at this point in the election would be much more disruptive and probably mark the beginning of the end for representative democracy in the U.S. You don't go back from that to standard politics.

24: IANAL, can't argue with you about the law, but I recall discussions in the Florida legislature in 2000 to step in and award the state's electoral votes to Bush if Bush v. Gore didn't get decided in Bush's favor. No one seemed to think that would have been contrary to the law; just an egregious violation of a basic democratic norms. But you know, desperate times, desperate measures.

24: And changing the rules for the Presidential election in the middle of its happening is even more unconstitutional.

Which I've always assumed would have gotten a more "limited" SC test in 2000 if the recount had proceeded and put Gore on top in Florida, and subsequently the Florida legislature by some means selected Bush.

31: We recall somewhat differently. However, I will admit that the pigfucking pigfuckers in the national political media were so deep into their "constitutional crisis/WE MUST KNOW THE WINNER!" narrative that they would have gotten on board.

If things keep going as they have been, even with Trump likely losing in November, the crazification factor is just getting worse and more disruptive, making it so bad that a fix requires a fourth constitutional settlement (#2 being Reconstruction and #3 the New Deal). I'm keeping a list of popular/reasonable but non-pony measures that could be a nice big package: money out of politics, NPV of some kind, nonpartisan redistricting commissions, two months only for campaigns, default to last year's budget if nothing passes, give Senate a more "advisory" role like Lords post-1911.

I realize something like this could only take place after the CF has shot its load in some horribly destructive way (like an actual default throwing the world into chaos) so that everyone else is clearer-eyed about them.

31 -- the difference is that, there, the legislature had authority under FL state law to resolve a (legitimately) disputed election result. Very different from changing the law in the middle of a Presidential campaign to end in advance direct election of electors by popular vote.

And I may be misremembering even that. But the resolution would be bases on preexisting Florida law -- ie, the Legislature might have ultimate authority to resolve a disputed contest under state law, but it couldn't* just step in on the Wednesday after electuin Tuesday and say "changed rules, everybody -- that vote you took didn't matter and now we're appointing the electors."

*I mean, it *could*, but that would almost certainly be unconstitutional and most certainly would be politically illegitimate.

that would almost certainly be unconstitutional and most certainly would be politically illegitimate.

Time was, I would have said the same about a Supreme Court decision that invented a wholly novel constitutional rationale for awarding the presidency to a favored candidate, and then disclaimed any precedential value for said rationale. And yet here we are.

Constitutional in Ohio and Michigan is whatever the sixth circuit says it is, if the Supreme Court splits four-four. Political legitimacy plus $3.85 will buy you a grande latte.

Yes you can game out a scenario in which this could happen and even be upheld by a court. But if it does we're in military coup scenario, and it's exactly as likely and legitimate as a military coup, so shitty and incomplete legal analysis by some random Pepperdine prof isn't reason to freak out more over this scenario than you would over any other blatant end-of-democracy scenario in the US. The House could just declare Hillary an illegitimately-elected candidate and pick its own President! The electoral college could refuse to accept the credentials of Hillary electors! Republican-run states could vote to secede on election Wednesday! If you're in a full-blown meltdown of constitutional government, lots of stuff can happen. That's where we'd have to be to have the scenario in the OP article happen, and if you're in a full-blown meltdown of constitutional democracy then this scenario isn't the most likely denoument of the end of the republic.

40 I'm not going to look-up the cases on this, but ISTM that how to count prisoners in redistricting is a real issue. Either you're counting them in the prison if they are there when the census is taken, or you're counting them somewhere other than the prison, even if they are there when the census is taken.

39: I'll grant that state legislatures collectively throwing the national election (SLCTTNE) is more likely post-Bush v. Gore, and that Bush v. Gore was more harmful and a bigger moral outrage than any one legislature's actions in this scenario.

However, SLCTTNE is still very unlikely. In addition to norms, which aren't completely toothless, there's also the practical problem of organizing. We may talk about Republicans like a cult but they don't literally take orders from a Supreme Leader, or have a hive mind. The closer they come to doing this, the more they'd have to talk about it. The more they do that, the more likely that someone would commit a gaffe in the sense of telling the truth by accident, the worse it would look, the more defections are likely, etc.

44: Good read, thanks. I especially liked this bit:

Jacobin also does a better job than most left-wing publications at engaging with mainstream media outlets. Take Ackerman's recent long piece critiquing Vox's coverage of Bernie Sanders' single-payer plan. You can have problems with that piece, but it spoke Vox's own language. It cited the same kinds of studies, used the same kinds of graphs, worked in the same vernacular. It didn't simply condemn us as sellout neoliberals (which ... fair enough) and move along; it engaged with the arguments on their own terms.

I've read several articles on Jacobin here and there, but never read anything about Jacobin before. I don't read much non-fiction in general, for which I regularly feel guilty. I probably won't subscribe to the magazine because realistically I won't start reading all that much more, but, I don't know, I'll encourage my wife's office to subscribe.

Less substantively, I was a little surprised to learn that Jacobin's Ackerman isn't spackerman.

42: Eh, I think "Never gonna happen" is the safest prediction for any of these scenarios. But I still contend that state legislative chicanery is orders of magnitude more probable than a coup or other extraconstitutional measures, based simply on the observation that, when all that stands between the contemporary GOP and a valued political end is a hallowed norm, that norm isn't safe.

Ask yourself, if the Pepperdine scenario went down, would the Wall Street Journal editorial page (standing in here for respectable conservative opinion) hesitate for a moment to endorse it? I don't think so. Heck, they'd probably find at least one columnist to argue that it wasn't merely allowed, but *compelled* by the text and history of the Constitution.

48.last: I have always wondered how the reverse Bush-Gore scenario would have been received (Bush wins popular, Gore electoral).

A contemporary article on Bush team preparations for that scenario (NY Daily News, so appropriate measure of salt required--not a reporter I am familiar with).

" How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course. In league with the campaign - which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness - a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. "We'd have ads, too," says a Bush aide, "and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted.

if the Pepperdine scenario went down, would the Wall Street Journal editorial page (standing in here for respectable conservative opinion) hesitate for a moment to endorse it

Maybe, but not because of its legality (it wouldn't have any). Or because of its claim to legitimacy. There is no precedent for state legislatures -- in the middle of an ongoing Presidential election -- changing the rules to deny popular election of the President. So the WSJ would effectively be endorsing a coup. It's fundamentally different from the Bush v. Gore situation. Yes, that was a shocking decision, but contested elections do happen and there are various imperfect methods for resolving them. The OP is something different. Legislatures haven't appointed electors anywhere since the Civil War (and Civil War amendments), and only South Carolina did it after about 1820. This isn't a "norm" in the sense of some polite bipartisan understanding, it's something fundamental to how democracy operates in the United States. There are (probably fatal) logistical difficulties, fatal state statutory problems, fatal state constitutional problems, and fatal federal constitutional problems (starting with art. 2 of the 14th Amendment and going from there). It's just not something that's going to happen absent a total meltdown of the democratic process. And as I say, in that case the legal niceties of how democracy ends are the least of your worries. It's just not worth worrying about no matter how cynical you are about courts or Republicans.

52: Yes, I think if anything like it were to happen in this election, it would be because of something like Florida 2000, a very close or otherwise disputed result that would potentially impact the overall result. Might be greater than usual temptation to push the limits.

53- Yeah. A much more plausible scenario to worry about (though still extremely unlikely) would be a three-way election with a "mainstream" conservative candidate, Trump, and Hillary. In one or two swing states with a Republican controlled legislature, the race between Hillary and the third-party conservative are close enough to be contested, and giving it to the third party gives no candidate a majority of the EC and sends the election to the House. Then, a Republican state legislature would only have to de-certify the Hillary electors on some ground of resolving a contested election, and then the election could go to the House, which would appoint the third-party non-Trump conservative.

Eg, if PA,OH, MI and FL were close enough in a 3-way race to make this scenario even quasi-plausible, that alone could throw the election to the House, assuming that Hillary won every other 2012 Obama state. Then a mainstream Republican could get elected with almost no state wins and despite coming in 3rd in the popular vote. Again, that's extremely unlikely, but closer to a maybe-in-the-real-world worry.

Maybe not, which is what makes the scenario unlikely, but it's not at the far end of fantasy to think that you could have (e.g.) an Ohio vote that was 33.3% Trump, 33% Clinton, and 33% new centrist-brand Kasich. I mean, that's extremely unlikely, and would require both a Clinton collapse and a boom for the "mainstream" Republican, but it's not wholly impossible if mainstream-Republican-person does pick up the "center' vote. And in that case you'd give the House Republicans the ability to decide the election.

Again, that's not at all likely. But it's infinitely likelier than the scenario described in the OP, if you're looking for bizarre election scenarios to get your underwear in a twist over.

There's no Republican who can beat both Clinton and Trump in a state carried by Obama.

This is where RT's fears of a Sanders Planet made sense: there's no realistic* scenario in which HRC doesn't win 90% of Obama voters, which simply doesn't leave enough voters on the table for third party shenanigans. By contrast, it's possible to imagine Sanders scaring off the rightmost 20% of Obama voters while also doing nothing to spur turnout among African-Americans** and over-40 women. At which point Bernie is down to 40% of the vote.

I mean, none of this will happen, because there isn't actually a centrist Republican savior, but HRC's boring, establishment bona fides mean that there's just no room whatsoever for such a figure (it's not as if disaffected Sanders voters would turn out for Kasich or whoever).

*that is, short of a Whitey tape release

**aside from a longstanding relationship between the Clintons and the A-A community, there's the clear fact that she's running as Obama's legacy, and A-As are of course very loyal to that legacy; Sander's message of "Obama sux" isn't going to draw big A-A turnout, no matter how many rallies Killer Mike attends.

64: IANAL, but the article we're all making fun of is all about the hypothetical case in which the Electoral College goes to someone acceptable. The U.S. would definitely be in the middle of an election by that point. Maybe states could change their electoral laws now, before the election officially starts, but norms and public outcry would be even more relevant now, because those legislators would be up for reelection too.

69: Unless I'm missing something, that is not really a plausible scenario. Wildly more likely to add states to the D column by splitting the GOP vote and allowing the D to take it with 40% than to throw blue states to one or the other GOP candidate, which is what would have to happen for that scenario. Splitting the Romney states between two non-D candidates doesn't do any harm to the Democrat.

72 -- yes. The only situation in which that wouldn't be true is (a) the Democratic candidate collapses and leaves room for a more moderate Republican; (b) the Democratic candidate is far to the left and perceived as such, and leaves open a wide space for a plausible "centrist" (if one exists) Republican to pick up those votes; (c) the "centrist" candidate is on fire and picks up tons of Dem votes.

All are extremely unlikely. A third party candidacy is massively more likely to help the Democrats than hurt the Republicans. And there's not even a plausible "mainstream" or "centrist" charismatic Republican choice. But to the extent you're worried about that scenario it's a decent reason to vote against Sanders, even though I think all three scenarios are also unlikely even with him as the nominee, if somewhat less unlikely.

I'm trying to picture what kind of campaign Trump will run against Clinton. Will he accuse her of murder? Will he call her a lesbian? Will he say stuff like, "Even her husband can't stand her!"? All of the above?

Solid seats are 205-174; we'll assume they stay that way. That means that the GOP needs just 13 more wins to hold the House.

Toss-Up or Worse is 18 R - 4 D. Let's assume that, if it really is a wave, Dems sweep those. We're up to 205-196.

Likely/Lean is 24 R - 10 D. Again, for a wave, Dems hold all 10 of theirs. If the Republicans win exactly half of their Likely and Lean seats... they lose the House by one seat. Wow. FWIW, of the 24 Likely/Lean, 11 are Likely and 13 are Lean, so splitting them in a wave isn't implausible.

So, clearly not likely, but possible. One thing I'm hopeful for is that Clinton could be looking at this sort of analysis and licking her chops at the prospect of Speaker Pelosi, which would give her a big incentive to to all-in on a nationalized election, the Party of Trump vs. the Party of Obama (which is to say a known quantity with good favorability ratings, ratings that will doubtless rise through the year, as he looks more and more statesmanlike). Her competing temptation will be the aggressive move to the center that so many of you fear, consolidating against Trump. But IMO that sort of campaign basically guarantees a non-wave in the House (because it's basically telling center-right voters that it's OK to vote for both Clinton and their friendly Republican Rep). Surely the last 6 years have impressed upon her the importance of the House if she wants to accomplish anything in the White House.

78- I admire your optimism. I think she might be fine with a Republican congress as that doesn't threaten the neo-liberal agenda that makes her richer, and gives her an excuse to ignore liberals she already doesn't like.

78 - A Republican Congress certainly would make it easier for her and her demon-partner Debbie Wasserman Schultz to enact the agenda of their consigliere number 1 Lloyd Blankfein, though she'd have to worry about Congressional oversight discovering the diamonds and Versace dresses that foreign terrorism-sponsoring countries bought for her through the Clinton Foundation.

78: I knew you'd say that, and I honestly don't dismiss it. But have the last 6 years advanced the neoliberal agenda? I mean, you know "neoliberal" isn't just a slur, the way Republicans use "socialist", right? One of the things neoliberals tend to believe in is competent, technocratic governance, and the Tea Party, with its shutdowns and mindless grandstanding, ain't it.

If there's a Republican House the next time we have a recession, we will literally reenact the Great Depression, with morons in power demanding that we balance the budget and shrink the monetary base as a response. Do you think that people calling her Hillary Hoover is something that she desires?

I'm sure that, in the abstract, Clinton could live with a GOP House. But given a shot at control over 2 branches of government and the chance to cinch control over the third for a generation? Isn't one of the reasons we're supposed to hate Hillary that she's ruthlessly ambitious?

I do! Even if you assume (deeply wrongly, but consistent with stupid internet argument) that HC is at the far right-wing end of the Democratic party, obviously she'd rather be in a position where her policy platform of the furthest-to-the-right Democratic member of Congress can actually be enacted by Congress. Don't be an idiot.

78- I admire your optimism. I think she might be fine with a Republican congress as that doesn't threaten the neo-liberal agenda that makes her richer, and gives her an excuse to ignore liberals she already doesn't like.

Are you crazy? Just think about it from a job satisfaction level -- would you want to go to work everyday if you knew that there was a committee (congress) which would try to block everything that you're doing.

Think about her experience with the Benghazi committee -- you think she wants that to be her experience for four years? Do you think she is unaware of all of the ways in which the Republicans tried to stonewall Obama?

Heck, do you think she wants to go through another debt ceiling fight?

2 The policy making of Herbert Hoover and current neoliberals have a lot in common. I'm sure both would deny wanting a great depression, both would create one. Money can be a great consoler.

3 I don't hate HRC. I know she is ambitious, I'm not totally convinced that she thinks her ambition is best served by working hard and taking risks to get a Democratic congress which won't always act in her interest. I think she might prefer it all other things being equal, but that's not the same thing.

Her competing temptation will be the aggressive move to the center that so many of you fear, consolidating against Trump. But IMO that sort of campaign basically guarantees a non-wave in the House (because it's basically telling center-right voters that it's OK to vote for both Clinton and their friendly Republican Rep). Surely the last 6 years have impressed upon her the importance of the House if she wants to accomplish anything in the White House.

I think the worry to have here is whether that kind of campaign would guarantee a non-wave in the House. It's perfectly possible to believe* that 'look at this centrism and quiet technocratic responsibility!' is a really strong selling point to people. Clinton running on that message would create a perception that that's how the Democrats are (because, hey, face of the party) and make people feel safer about voting for Democratic party candidates. As a result the party overall would get more support and also center-right-anti-Trump Republicans voting with that picture of the Democratic party in mind would give her strong coattails.

"Vote Democrat I promise we aren't scary commies who will change things in ways that make you uncomfortable!" is certainly a message that she could believe would give her strong coattails, and she could also believe moving to/sticking at the left would have a "Rejoice Comrades - soon we shall seize the means of production!" effect and make people think they should elect some kind of restraint on what she can do, for the sake of balance.

*I think the effect you suggest is way more likely, but honestly the view I'm describing here (and not endorsing) could very easily be the way Clinton is thinking. I don't think it's that much less likely than the one you're talking about anyway.

I agree with 88. I think it's very easy for her (and, more importantly*, her advisors) to think the following: 1. Against a nutjob like Trump, the winning message is respectable competence (which is a longtime HRC value regardless); 2. the way to win in Lean R districts is to convince center-right voters who fear Trump that Dem=HRC/BHO and GOP=Trump; and 3. nationalizing the election, in the sense of running on GOP=disaster, risks riling up the Rs who don't want to vote for Trump, but will vote against an HRC who has no check on her dictatorial powers.

And they could be right! I think it's more likely that, as usual, this is a base turnout election, and so she needs to use her longtime rep as a levelheaded, respectable Dem to counter a pretty aggressive anti-R campaign, but the other theory isn't obviously wrong. On paper, you can't win Romney districts by running left. But this election is so weird, I'm not sure. We've long said that a Cruz candidacy is a bigger threat to the Republicans, because downticket candidates can't realistically distance themselves from him (without being flagrant, which they wouldn't do, I don't think). But with Trump, anyone in a risky district has a big incentive to downplay him and play up their personal record.

*because I don't think this is an issue with clear salience or an obviously right or wrong answer, so I think it's less likely to be a gut call for her; her advisors will have sway here IMO

"Clinton and the Democrats are the party of responsible governance that delivers progress for Americans and Trump's Republicans are dangerous clowns who hate women and ethnic minorities and will put everything at risk" is 100% the line I'd run to get a majority in the House and I strongly suspect that it will be the line the Dems end up running.

That's the story which delivers a wave win, because it appeals to non-ideological centrists, wavering Republicans, and inspires minority voters - keys to a Democratic win in marginal seats. It's not great for ideological voters but they'll vote anyway and they'll vote for Clinton and the Democrats anyway.

If it is Trump (and his general favorability doesn't change when he hits the general) and some SuperPac isn't running "A VOTE FOR [REP NAME] IS A VOTE FOR TRUMP" ad nonstop in every congressional district then to be honest I don't know what the point of the Democrats even running is. And ideally even if Clinton didn't particularly think left wing policies that she liked were great sellers with the voters she wants to appeal to it would be a good election to run on them. Held up against Trump you could go further than Sanders does and still come off as the reasonable competent one. But it's really not obvious that that's the calculation her advisers would make: it's certainly not the kind of call they made their names making, anyway.

This is a key point that Facebook-level political analysis often misses. There's no evidence at all that "increase turnout" and "move to the left" are the same things for Democrats. To the extent that there are sympathetic but non-turned out Democratic voters, they are almost entirely (and, indeed, almost by definition) not ideological. Ideological left-liberals vote already in enormous numbers and will vote for the leftmost candidate. An "exciting" but non-ideological Democrat that gets people to vote for some non-ideological reason (maybe ... first woman President?) is what you'd want to drive turnout. I don't think Clinton is the best possible candidate to generate that kind of excitement, but Trump might be the best possible opponent, and regardless her movement to the "center" isn't going to be what depresses turnout.

Bah. This talk is all part of the same sort of ratchet that killed the Roman Republic. Political moves that were unspeakable became speakable, then inched up to by various consuls, provincial governors and other scum, then actually performed. Then the opposition pointed and said "See, they did that unspeakable thing! We are going to do it too, so there!" Eventually there were no norms left and the work of the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Cato, Caesar, Anthony at chipping them all away left them with Augustus and a succession of very much lesser types.

Nothing that is happening this year is enough to continue to expand the stupid precedents of (e.g.) 2000 and chip another chunk off of our political norms.

I agree pretty wholeheartedly with 19 and 42. CC and RT are not those I agree with that often but they are right. I also hope Keir in 93 is right.

And we won't know what Prez Clinton's agenda is until we see what exactly she signs. Words speeches campaign promises proposals mean nothing.

"Wow, I sent a proposal to Congress asking for rainbow ponies and what I get back is death penalty for software pirates. And no ponies? Damn, Congress works in mysterious ways, but I never talk to those people.

With 6 years of the most radical rightwing Congress in maybe history, Obama will end up the the 2nd lowest number of vetoes, after Harding, who was drunk. Truman, who may be the comparable President, had twenty times as many vetoes (180 - 8).

Vetoes aren't a huge deal, just a negotiating tool for the executive branch, to change a line or two.

What the Republican House passed, and Obama signed, was in any sane meaning of the term, Obama's agenda.

Does Clinton want a Democratic House?

Well, since y'all think November will be a cakewalk and landslide, we can watch how much of her campaign money she gives to Congressional races. She won't need any for the general.

If "neoliberal" includes Obama and Clinton, then 86.2 is totally wrong. Note that we didn't actually have another Great Depression in the US, even though we exactly recreated the conditions for one.

1) Avoided the Great Depression, but allowed the Long Recession, which might even be better for wage cramdown. And we eventually got out of the Great Depression, whereas many economists believe we will never return to the output trendline of 2007, in other words, one up on Hoover, in creating an irreversible irrevocable rationalization.

2) I won't get into the Scott Scummer David Beckworth arguments that monetary policy has been excessively tight.

3) Wiki:Congress, desperate to increase federal revenue, enacted the Revenue Act of 1932, which was the largest peacetime tax increase in history.[124] The Act increased taxes across the board, so that top earners were taxed at 63% on their net income. The 1932 Act also increased the tax on the net income of corporations from 12% to 13.75%.

The final attempt of the Hoover Administration to rescue the economy occurred in 1932 with the passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, which authorized funds for public works programs and the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The RFC's initial goal was to provide government-secured loans to financial institutions, railroads and farmers. The RFC had minimal impact at the time, but was adopted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and greatly expanded as part of his New Deal.

"in addition to the Revenue Act of 1932 Hoover agreed to roll back several tax cuts that his Administration had enacted on upper incomes. The estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15%. Also, a "check tax" was included that placed a 2-cent tax (over 30 cents in today's economy) on all bank checks."

FDR also raised taxes in 1933

Obama cut taxes in 2009, and had a miserable deficit spending public works program, one sunsetted to destroy hope and maybe 1/3 of the necessary size, followed by Obama's austerity talk in 2010 SOTU

102- At least you came with an argument. :) Yeah the stimulus represents real progress over 1930, hurray! It also wasn't an accident that Larry Summers presented a plan with an inadequate total. Nor was it bad luck that the emphasis on tax cut and "shovel ready" projects meant that real infrastructure spending was very limited.

That wasn't the last chance we'll get at another great depression either. The preferences of the big donors to our political system will continue to make it ever harder to deal with future crashes.

I wonder if flipping Mormons over to the D column would really be so impossible. Yes, Mormons are extremely culturally conservative. But they've always struck me as more decent, reasonable people than, say Sarah Palin conservatives, not to speak of Trump conservatives.

Further, they don't seem particularly hung up on economic conservatism, in as much as they've already got their own church-controlled tithing-based socialism thing going on.

But the kicker is that they are a genuine religious minority. That might be a deciding factor in their decision to embrace a Trump administration.

Speaking of PUMAs, I had been wondering what Larry Johnson of the No Quarter blog (infamous in 2008 for promoting the reality of the Whitey Tape while never producing it) had gotten up to, and .. wait for it ...Trump seems to be the answer for him now.

538 polled a lot of analysts on the likely results of the rest of the primary season and they reckon Trump will come close to a majority of delegates but won't quite make it. Obviously, margin of error, so could go either way

Wow, reading some of the comments there make it clear that they are in a very different epistemic bubble than I am.

Yves Smith: 1. I doubt any Sanders supporters would protest for Clinton. However, our comments section suggests ~10-15% would vote for her, and polls indicate over 50%. But polls have been lousy at getting a reading on young voters, which is Sanders' base.

2. I do think a lot of business-minded Republicans, particularly those working in or dependent on multinational corporations, would vote for Clinton. She's a neocon and very much pro business. She's not even very strong on abortion rights. Her remark about abortions is they should be cheap, safe and rare. So only the hard core Evangelical types would have a problem with her.

...

Ed: Its occurred to me that the supporters of Nader in '00 may have made a mistake in not just endorsing George W Bush, if they were visible, and encouraging people to vote for him. The objective would have been the same, to punish the Democrats for all the damage done to left wing causes by the Clinton administration. But there would have been no mistaking the strategy, and we would have been spared the "you really wanted to vote for a Democrat but you were deluded" rhetoric we got for over a decade from the machine Dems.

Presidential candidate George W Bush was actually to Gore's left on foreign policy, though admittedly the actual administration didn't work out that way, and his administration was much better than the surrounding Dem administrations on financial fraud.

EndOfTheWorld: Yes, Ed--that's the way I feel about it. I used to think the Democratic Party was for peace... at least more than the repugs. But HRC is a devout war monger. What I want to do is punish the Democratic Party in the only way I can,,,,voting for the Republican. Of course if there is a third party candidate with a possibility of WINNING, that would be a good option. I will vote the straight repug ticket, because if HRC does get elected, I don't want Congress to cooperate with her in any way, shape or form, and I hope she gets impeached.

...

Synoia: Have a Trump/Sanders ticket.

On a coldly logical level Trump is to the left of Clinton on domestic issues. If the democrats are going to throw the left under the bus again, it would be an object lesson for the ages for them to discover there is a place for them to go.

119: Someone at Crooked Timber (Quiggin, maybe?) had a post a while back about how "neo-" as a prefix has negative connotations and "post-" has positive ones. I forget the details but I found it interesting at the time.